Sunday, January 11, 2009

Some Vacation!

So I took a little time off. Well, a LOT of time off, can't believe it has been 3 months since I have neglected my blog. It totally amazes me that people still actually read my meandering scribblings. To those of you who have left comments, I apologize for never responding. Bad blogger that I am, I humbly beg forgiveness. I can assure you that I have not been idle.

As an aging BSN student I continue to plod along one course at a time. I can't say I actually enjoy it, but at least now I am over the hump and have more credits under my belt than the ones to come. I am CLEPping humanities next week so I can get credit for two electives, and plan to CLEP American government, college math, algebra, and chemistry. These latter three are not strong suits and will require tutoring probably. Although I did discover a web site, Aleks, which is sort of an online tutor for math and science. I have done a few math modules and have discovered that I'm not as math-illiterate as I have thought all these years. I found out that there are (gasp!) RULES for this stuff! Imagine that! I just never picked up on that in high school! Ha!



On the work front I have stopped doing the admission job. It was too stressful for a lot of reasons. Now, keep in mind that I have plenty of supervisory experience. I was a clinical leader in a very busy 35 bed ER, was a nurse coordinator for a bunch of school nurses, and I have been a charge nurse for most of my 32 years. Heck, my first job out of nursing school was a 3-11 charge nurse on a 40 bed rehab floor. Just me and my shiny new RN license, 1 LPN, and 4 LNA's. Talk about home alone! The point is I can handle pressure, but I digress; the admissions job was like fitting square pegs in round holes. Nobody wanted to take the admissions, the PACU needed to get people out, the ICU needed to get people out, the ER needed to get people out, Tele needed to transfer non-tele's off their unit, the floors were understaffed and overwhelmed, primary docs wanted patients directly admitted and it was pretty much a damned house of cards on most days because beds were scarce as hen's teeth.



So what have I been doing instead? I took a position at Scary Catholic Hospital where nobody yells at me. Yeah, I took a pay hit. Yeah, I have to work weekends and holidays. But it is a relatively stress-free existence. I will still work in the ER at Pseudocity, but I won't be doing much in the admissions line. I am rather liking my sanity.